Page 103 of Dose

“Raphael has already made that point.”

“Then hear it twice.” Nikolai comes around the table. “You do not enter Seattle to punish yourself. If Damon clears you and the intelligence gate opens, you enter because your defined role improves the children’s chance of surviving extraction. You follow the abort conditions. You leave when ordered. Phoenix does not grant standing field status.”

It is not the sweeping approval I might once have mistaken for trust.

It is better.

“Understood.”

“Final assessment tomorrow,” he says. “Until then, sleep.”

“Is that an order?”

“Yes.”

I leave before he can ask whether I intend to follow it.

At three in the morning, I am in the Archive looking for Seattle’s supplementary pharmacy files.

This is technically compatible with sleeping. It is not compatible with the spirit of Nikolai’s order.

Ezra is alone at his station.

Six screens surround him. His hands move between them while he speaks in a low, clipped rhythm.

“Contact creates an exploitation path. Distance gives her time and initiative. Every branch returns to the same problem.”

“Ezra.”

He startles hard enough to strike the edge of the desk.

Three windows vanish before I can read them. The fourth remains open long enough for me to recognize the Wager Protocol header.

“I didn’t hear you,” he says.

“I noticed.”

“Seattle projections.”

It is a poor lie by his standards.

“Is Raphael reviewing this model with you?”

His hands go still. “Not this part.”

Nikolai and Raphael told him about C-11 the night we returned from Texas. The restricted files were supposed to be reviewed with support, not absorbed alone at three in the morning until the program’s language replaced his own.

“You don’t have to tell me what contact means,” I say. “But I won’t pretend I didn’t find you running Wager scenarios by yourself.”

His expression closes.

“Is that a threat to report me?”

“No. It is a refusal to leave you alone with it.”

“I didn’t ask you to stay.”

“You have choices. Message Raphael, close the file and sit with me until morning, or let me message him. I won’t ask what you’re calculating while we wait.”